Brands with Heart

What are the most inspiring initiatives from "brands with heart"?

Emotion is
very often the starting point of a designer’s inspiration… Saying this, the
real challenge in our field is to move from an emotion-driven vision to a
genuine emotional response for the end consumer. As underlined by Rafael Gomez,
designer at Queensland University of Technology, ”to design enjoyable products
we must first understand what makes people happy and design products based on
that critical understanding.” He analyzed the emotional impact of MP3 and PDA
devices : beyond the functional benefits of these music players and
communications tools, these devices were perceived as important for consumers,
because of their « escape » and « relaxation » attributes. The understanding of
human needs should thus be leveraged to create any goods or services, according
to Gomez.

Co-creation
as an emotional commitment driver between brands and consumers

Youtube,
Wordpress, Tumblr, Soundcloud, Flickr, Instagram, … numerous sites and
applications enable everyone to become creative and to share their words,
pictures, songs, videos, and so on… Creativity is now everywhere, and it
influences the evolution of marketing : today, brands can collaborate with
their consumers-creators, in order to create always more bonding, commitment,
and conversation.

According
to Cecilia Weckstörm, head of the Consumer Experience department at Lego,
“Brands are no longer created, they are cocreated,”she argued. “Strong
emotional engagement produces the motivation to cocreate.” Also, Lego
encourages its millions fans to develop content via their social platform
ReBrick, which allows the brand lovers to share their own creations.

In addition
to their commercial value, brands can try to boost their social value on a
long-term perspective, by raising awareness on their own causes. Wikipedia can
count on the involvement and support from thousands of contributors, and is
thus able to offer a source of knowledge without precedent, that is accessible
to everyone. A brand such as Autolib incites people to share their car, instead
of owning one. This way, brands encourage creation and sharing, while
minimizing the destruction of human and natural resources. When they imply such
an equation, brands enhance their emotional capital towards consumers.

Brands that
commit. For real.

We wrote a
note on Generation G about three years ago : brands still continue to praise
for kindness. Interflora sending flowers to Twitter users when they feel down,
Ben & Jerry’s offering free ice-creams, Tropicana bringing the sun back to
a Canadian city during winter, Google supporting the LGBT cause with its
campaign It Gets Better, … All these initiatives truly reveal brands’ hearts.

Chipotle,
the Mexican fast-food giant, proved its difference when fully repositioning its
brand philosophy early 2000’s. In its report Food with integrity, the company
draws attention on its efforts to get supplies of healthy and free-range meats,
organic products, hormone-free dairy products, family farms and as much as
possible, from local producers. In 2012, Chipotle communicated for the first
time on TV during the Grammy Awards ceremony, with a campaign entitled Back to
the start, a poetic animation movie denouncing the devastating effects of
intensive farming, with a country-style cover of Coldplay’s song The Scientist.
Chipotle invited the audience to buy the song on iTunes. The benefits have been
donated to their foundation Cultivate Foundation, which aims at encouraging
responsible, sustainable and healthy farming. In addition to this
Cannes-awarded campaign, the display integrates a unique loyalty program – Farm
Team – dedicated to helping members chosing a more responsible diet, as well as
a Cultivate music festival, mixing concerts, food, crafts and debates.

Through
this assertive posture, aligned with the current consumers’ expectations, its
sophisticated storytelling, a remarkable campaign that calls on emotion, we can
definitely say that this constitutes a great brand project, all the more surprising
coming from a fast-food chain ! Rival fast food giants are learning lessons
from Chipotle’s stance.: McDonalds recently announced its willingness to stop
tapping into intensive farming !

Brands
which change the world : an utopia ?

In a crisis
context which has brought along gloominess for a couple years, brands have
finally understood that consumers were eager to consume goods and services with
a purpose : they want to feel that they contribute to building a better world.
Brands like Fairtrade suggests another way to envision consumption, by
improving the life conditions of small producers. The positive evolution is
that this type of initiative is not only the prerogative of fairtrade
organizations…

The case
that moved us the most lately is the operation Help – I’ve cut myself… and I
want to save a life. Help Remedies is a company which sells over-the-counter
medicine and first aid products in the US, and which was already known for
several reasons : its packaging that take the heat ouf the serious world of
drugs with playful, colorful and minimalist boxes, affordable prices, a witty
and fun tone of voice, crazy website and videos, …

Last year,
the brand teamed up with the ad agency Droga 5 and the bone-marrow transplant
organization DKMS, and included a marrow donor registration kit, a swab for
mopping up drops of blood and a pre-paid envelope. inside its band-aid boxes.
The principle is simple : when cutting yourself, you can send some of your
blood to the national bone marrow registry, which will inform you of your donor
potentiality, by easily reaching for a plaster. This sharp initiative put the
spotlight on this fundamental cause thanks to an simple yet powerful mechanism,
and the brand saw its bands sales boomed by 1900% in a couple of months ! Not
to mention the hundreds of lives that could have been saved, with one simple
gesture…

Financial
scandals, food crisis, frauds, relocations, bad buzz, … rarely brands have been
fighting over so many issues and threats. Though, they have the power and means
to make society sensitive to great causes. By launching heartfelt actions,
generous brands can not only increase their profit, but also and beforehand
generate loyalty from a commited and passionate audience. And let’s dream for
one minute : they might be able to change the world.

CBA is part of a global network with offices in San Francisco, New York and around the world.

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